THE NEW PRINCIPLE OF INDUSTRY. 



531 



reappear as a participant in the profits of labor. 

 The capitalist being paid his proper interest, he 

 has no more claim to any further payment than 

 a landlord has to a second rent, or a coal-mer- 

 chant to a double discharge of his bill. 



It is labor being imprisoned in the cage of 

 wages, that has inclined its ear to the sirens of 

 state socialism. Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Marx, 

 and Lord Beaconsfield — three Jewish leaders 

 whose passion has been ascendency, and whose 

 policy has been politics — have all sung in vary- 

 ing tunes the same song. Lassalle cried aloud to 

 German workmen : " Put no trust in thrift. The 

 cruel, brazen law of wages makes individual ex- 

 ertion unavailing. Look to state help." Marx 

 exclaimed, " Despise the dwarfish redress the 

 slaves of capital can win." Disraeli sent the 

 Young England party to offer patrician sympa- 

 thy, May-poles, and charity. Auguste Comte pro- 

 posed confidence and a plentiful trencher. The 

 Emperor Napoleon told French artisans that 

 " industry was a machine working without a 

 regulator, totally unconcerned about its moving 

 power, crushing beneath its wheels both men and 

 matter." They were all known by one sign — 

 Paternal Despotism. They all sang the same 

 song — " Abjure politics, party, and self-effort, and 

 the mill of the state, which we shall turn, will 

 grind you benevolently in a way of its own." 

 State socialism means the promise of a dinner, 

 and a bullet when you clamor for it. It never 

 meant anything else or gave anything else. If 

 the expression is allowable to me, I should say, 

 God preserve working-men from the " saviors of 

 society !" 



In constructive cooperation everything turns 

 upon the conception of principle in the minds of 

 those who are engaged in the work. The reader 

 understands the whole thing when he understands 

 the lines on which that principle moves. Every 

 chapter in the history of association consists of 

 illustrations of the efforts made to get on these 

 lines, and narratives of the adventures or success 

 or failure in building upon them. Equitable in- 

 dustry proceeds upon the eternal line on which 



humanity must proceed — that of well-understood 

 self-interest. The explanation of what this is, is 

 very simple. The self-interest — the main-spring 

 of progress — which the better sort of artisans 

 have at heart, is the self-interest of health, truth, 

 generosity, justice, and moderate competence. 

 The self-interest of man means, first, his health, 

 of which temperance, not merely in diet but in 

 pleasure, is the security; it lies next in truth, 

 which means exactness of knowledge and expres- 

 sion, without which he moves in the dark and 

 misguides others. It lies also in generosity, 

 which means liberality in disclosing truth and 

 befriending helplessness, and self-effort of im- 

 provement in those who show signs of it. True 

 self-interest is injustice, which gives all its force 

 to the right and against the wrong act or the 

 wrong judgment of others, lest self, losing force, 

 sink under the patronage of charity. Industrial 

 interest consists in the command of means of 

 moderate competence by equitable association 

 for the conduct of labor and division of profits, 

 without which labor is a ceaseless strife, bringing 

 the chance of splendor to the few and certain 

 precariousness to the many — that danger and 

 despair of every state which equity in industry 

 alone can terminate. This new principle of 

 equity has arisen without glamour, it has grown 

 without friends, it has spread without conspiracy, 

 and acquired power without injustice. Stronger 

 than the sword, and loftier than charity, coopera- 

 tion gives to labor an abiding grasp of its fruits, 

 and supersedes benevolence by rendering the 

 industrious independent of it. It seeks that or- 

 ganization of labor and intelligence in which it 

 shall be impossible for the industrious to be de- 

 praved, or mean, or poor, except by their own 

 choice or their own act, which can bring no 

 scandal and no remorse to society, which pro- 

 vides that neither baseness nor misery shall be 

 any longer the necessity of their condition. All 

 this cannot come soon, but it will come surely as 

 thought and courage, patience and perseverance, 

 shall put in force the new principle of industry, — 

 Nineteenth Century. 



